Tips for Carefree Landscapes: Over 500 Sure-Fire Ways to Beautify Your Yard and Garden [Paperback]

Marianne Binetti (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Lazy landscapers rejoice! Here's an invaluable book for everyone who loves to have an attractive garden, but hates to spend lots of time and energy on it. Marianne Binetti's philosophy is simple: Don't fight Mother Nature! Investing time up front -- preparing the soil and selecting the best plants for your area -- can save hours of sweat in the long run.

You'll learn how to keep down lawn maintenance by incorporating flowering shrubs and groundcovers into your landscape and by not striving for the "perfect" lawn. How to plant hedges that need little or no pruning. When you can save a problem plant from bugs and diseases and when you should just "throw in the trowel."

Professional garden writer Marianne Binetti shares hundreds of expert tips that guarantee maximum gardening enjoyment with a minimum of fuss. Tips for Carefree Landscapes answers the most-asked gardening questions and recommends the easiest plants to grow in both sunny and shady areas of your garden. Chapters on shrubs, bulbs, annuals, perennials, container gardening -- even low-maintenance roses -- explain exactly where you can cut corners and where you can't.

Here are just a few of the creative, sensible, and time-saving suggestions you'll find in Tips for Carefree Landscapes:

* Own an old, leaky hose? Punch a few more holes in it, put it along a shrub border or perennial bed, and cover it with bark mulch. You'll conserve water and save yourself work.

* Don't want to wait for compost? Try "spot composting" by digging small holes in your beds and throwing in your old weeds. You'll improve the soil as you go.

* Have a supply of Styrofoam "peanuts" around the house? Put them to good use by placing them in the bottom of a large planter -- they provide good drainage.

About the Author

Garden columnist and owner of a landscape design business, Marianne Binetti has been searching for the perfect plant--impossible to kill, but always in full bloom. It's something most gardeners are probably looking for, not to mention an honest request coming from the author of the Storey titles, Shortcuts for Accenting Your Garden and Tips for Carefree Landscape. Mother of three, Marianne's articles have been featured in Woman's Day magazine, and she writes a syndicated gardening column called "The Compleat Home Gardener" which runs in more than 20 newspapers in Western Washington, where she resides with her husband Joe. in 1988 she received the National Garden Bureau's annual Exemplary Journalism Award. Marianne has also worked for florists, nurseries and greenhouses for nearly 20 years. Binetti is a member of the Garden Writers Association of America and Plant Amnesty.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (January 3, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882665723
• ISBN-13: 978-0882665726
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally--some gardening advice I can use., July 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tips for Carefree Landscapes: Over 500 Sure-Fire Ways to Beautify Your Yard and Garden (Paperback)

This is quite possibly the best gardening book I've ever read. I have discovered that, while I love gardens, I don't especially like gardening. Thanks to Marianne Binetti and her very practical advice, I can have an attractive, low-maintenance garden in no time. Especially helpful are her picks for the best bulbs, perennials, and shrubs for lazy gardeners, including sturdy species of roses for those of us who thought roses were too fussy to grow. Marianne's style is easy to read, funny, and makes me feel so much better about myself and my less-than-meticulous gardening skills. I highly recommend this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the best book so far for lazy gardener like myself, May 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Tips for Carefree Landscapes: Over 500 Sure-Fire Ways to Beautify Your Yard and Garden (Paperback)

I love buying books and this book is the best book I have ever bought for gardening. This is a book for the weekend gardener. I only spent may be 1 hour a week for the yard. It is fun to read. This book is really good for beginner too. Marianne told a lot of not to do stories. It also contains what are the best plants to use for a carefree garden. I remembered I found this book too plain the first time I read it, but over the past 4 years of gardening I can only said that what are in this book really make sense. If I have followed it's advises from the start I would save myself lot of troubles I am having now

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grinning and gardening together, July 28, 1998

By 

Marlys ([e-mail]) "majaho" (Black Diamond, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tips for Carefree Landscapes: Over 500 Sure-Fire Ways to Beautify Your Yard and Garden (Paperback)

If you're a gardener or a would-be gardener, and you like books that make you grin, books that include lots of easily understood information, and books that are short and succinct, Marianne Binetti's Tips for Carefree Landscapes is the book for you. And, Marianne's tips are perfect for those of you who don't have hours and hours to spend gardening and "lawning." The last chapter, "Gardening Horror Stories" with sub-titles such as The Footprints of Death, lets readers know that they're not the only ones who have had or will have fluky garden experiences! And each story has a "gardening moral." Read. Learn. Grin and enjoy! I did.